Strawman's Hammock Read Online Free Page B

while alongside were arranged murky Bell jars filled to the brim with the heads of moccassins and bullfrogs, the gizzards of chickens.
    The hearts, locals whispered, of babies miscarried from their mama’s wombs.
    The migrant and Latin workers recently come to the northwestern isolates of Florida called her a curandero, which for these Spanish-speaking newcomers connoted something more than a medicine woman. Something only slightly less remarkable than a witch.
    â€œDone got yo’sef a nasty ’fliction.”
    Hezikiah spat some variety of tobacco through one of the many long creases that separated her floorboards.
    The man sweated exposed on the precipice of her chair.
    She turned absently to gather a rolling pin under the rank pit of one arm. A rolling pin. A hardwood cylinder fashioned to roll freely between lathed handles. She might have been making biscuits. That thought must have occurred.
    â€œGonna make me some hoecakes after,” she declared. “You want some? Be good. Hoecake and mayhaw jelly. Pussome lead back in yo’ pencil.”
    His Spanish was slurred in reply. “(Mother of Jesus, protect me from this crazy woman. Make her hand quick. Heal me.)”
    She inspects him briefly.
    â€œSame girl?”
    The man nods silent assent to her reproach. And then—
    â€œ(I kill her! I cut her fucking heart! Slit her guts!)”
    Hezikiah offers an uncomprehending smile to that threat. She sees before her a strong man, strong as a bull, barrel chested, thick forearms. A twist of muscle knots along the trapezoids that anchor his neck and shoulders.
    â€œBetter start usin’ some kinda protection,” she counsels. And then she comes to him. Drags with a bare foot a stool before him, a milkstool, its cool, metal plane only slightly lower than the Mexican worker’s exposed crotch.
    â€œWont some more whiskey?”
    â€œSí,” he nods. “Andele! Andele!”
    She scoops up a jug from the floor with sudden dexterity. Offers it to him. He slurps the hooch down. Her nostrils flare to see his throat constrict with his stomach. He has an erection fully risen now.
    â€œAin’t you somethin’?” She murmurs admiration.
    She takes the jug away, reaches for the rolling pin.
    â€œNext time use some protection,” she offers once more, pulling him hard and flat along the stool’s cool, metal pan.
    â€œWill this…? Be bad?” he gargles the question in English.
    She smiles. Reaches up to slip her unwashed rainment free. A bony shoulder thrusts from beneath that flimsy shroud. Then the remains of a breast, a dug dried hard and gnarled as a raisin.
    â€œTake it.”
    Her eyes shine wet and bright.
    â€œSee who lets go first.”
    *   *   *
    A silver knife on a silver belly opened a black mullet stem to stern. A tall, vital woman cleaned the fish, raking its innards into a slop-sink braced with two-bys on a wide porch. A flight of gulls fluttered white as ashes across the face of a setting sun that settled into the Gulf of Mexico. She was bent at the waist, this woman at work, her bare back rippling sinuously with activity. The chill that surprised folks on the first of November had reverted by week’s end to temperatures fueled by the Gulf of Mexico.
    It was a sultry afternoon, an Indian summer’s day shot with humidity. Her skin caught the setting sun in a sheen of perspiration. Locals speculated too often regarding the etiology of that skin, its remarkable tone and color, rich as it was, a deep milk chocolate. The skin of a Nubian. Her hair was full of body, hard to tame. Black as a crow’s. A short row of metal tines pulled back those wiry strands like a handful of hemp to reveal a proud face. It was a tourist’s gift, the barrette, a comb of copper set in lapis lazuli.
    The mullet went immediately to ice in a tub filled with fish. You wanted mullet to stay sweet, you’d better not let him warm.